What's in a Spell?
by Valieara
Summary: Why are students smiling during their Charms O.W.L? McGonagall observes, reminisces, and sets to find out. An observer's look a shared memory.


**_Disclaimer:_** All characters, scenes, items, and whatnot belong to J.K. Rowling and her publisher. No money is being made, and I don't intend to steal anything: ideas, money, etc. Although there is one small line taken from page 712 of the hardback version of _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix _near the end of the vig.

Oh, but how I love expanding upon scenes and writing missing ones! And this would indeed be one of the expanded ones. I hope you recognize it, as it's from a different POV.

Hope you enjoy it! Comments, reviews, and constructive critisism will be extremely appreciated. :)

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_As a rule, Professor Minerva McGonagall was not a procrastinator – quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. However, there were exceptions to every rule, though she was loathe to admit it, and today happened to be the exception. She simply did _not_ want to grade yesterday's Fourth Year Transfiguration essays (Describe the differences and similarities in the Conjuring and Vanishing Spells' core theory and use), as she had a foreboding feel what they would turn out like. No, she intended to put it off for as long as possible. 

Fate, it seemed, was not on her side, giving her ample opportunity (more like shoving it under her nose) to grade the y things. She'd been given charge of the Fifth Years as they took their O.W.L's. She didn't even get them during their Transfiguration theoretical, but their Charms theoretical. She supposed, on reflection, that it didn't matter that greatly – students weren't allowed to ask for help and professors weren't allowed to give it, even if she had been able to monitor them during their Transfiguration exam. Still, she felt as if she had been somehow slighted by the Fates, or whoever was up there.

She looked somewhat more sternly than she usually would have out at her students, who feverishly waited for her command to start frantically writing. Her gaze softened a bit – old though she was (and far be it from her to deny it), she remembered having to take those blasted exams. _Oh, to see them N.E.W.T year! _her more sardonic side rose up. She quickly squashed it down, controlling the threatening corners of her twitching lips. She already felt much better than she had walking in.

Instead, she surveyed the teenagers with a slight smile – just the sight of them... blue eyes blended with the brown and the hazel, even the occasional green; brown and black hair blurred with splotches of and patches of red; quills were held at the ready; high-strung faces trained on her; their parchments face down in front of them; tense hands ready to turn them over quickly..."You may begin," she declared, turning over a giant emerald studded hourglass on the desk in front. Slowly she sat down in the giant wooden high-backed chair behind the desk, as fifty strained gazes left her. In turn, hers turned on all of them, left to reminisce.

How quickly they all grew! It seemed only this year she had led the small, scared, shivering children from their trip across the lake through the Entrance Hall and into the Great Hall for the first time. Professor McGonagall looked on with a rare sentimental eye. In her eyes, in part they were all her children, belonging to her. She found it amazing how soon they grew and left. More always came, but they, too, grew from timid children to competent s before her eyes, then left, headed to greater things. She was not a biological mother - she rather suspected she was too old for that, in any case – but she was quite happy with and extremely proud of her student-children.

Had it really been five years since this gaggle of giggling, shaking, tiny children had nervously followed her into Hogwarts? Professor McGonagall shook her head, hardly daring to believe it. At times, when she thought on it over the years, she suspected that this was what first invoked the maternal feelings in her – she was the first one to lead them into a new world, take them under her wing, comfort them, to some extent, even shield them. McGonagall sighed, wise and experienced eye scanning the crowd before her, several faces and heads poking out at her.

Yet, there was Lisa Turpin: no longer a small, pale, limp-haired child, she was now a Ravenclaw; a tall, pretty, and graceful . There was Hannah Abott, grown out of her awkwardness into a young woman, still struggling to manage several things at once. There was Ernie MacMillan, taller, but still a bit stout and boyish in the face. Justin Finch-Flentchy, older, taller; darker, more handsome. Smart too. Her gaze hardened as her eyes fell on a new crowd. There were the Slytherins, as Slytherin-ish as they ever were, only physically older. Pansy Parkinson still needed a new facial expression, as did Draco Malfoy and his cronies. Mr. Malfoy could stand to lose the arrogant smirk (though at present he was wearing a satisfyingly worried and bemused look), and Misters Crabbe and Goyle could stand to lose the constantly lost expression. She tore her eyes away from where they did not want to be, before she thought something she could get in trouble for.

And there they were – the Gryffindors. Her smile instantly returned as though it had never gone. These were more her children than any others, who (unfairly, since she was biased, she was sure) brought on more maternal feelings than other children. After all, she was the leader of the pack, the mother hen, whatever analogy one wanted to use to express it. There was Dean Thomas, taller, thinner, with somewhat more of an artistic look to him, though she couldn't quite put it in words; Seamus Finnigan, as pasty pale as ever and even more gangly, which she reflected would probably go away by the next year; Parvati Patil, somehow more lovely than her sister Padma three rows to the right of her though they were identical, her hair braided with ribbon out of her face; her best friend Lavendar, gone from a small, popular child to a beautiful socialite young woman, light brown hair framing her light face. They were still hers, even if the Professor didn't particularly care for their personality. And who knew? Perhaps they would learn something more than jokes, or sarcasm, or looks and popularity. Perhaps they already had.

And there was Ron Weasley, still as red, as freckled, and as gangly as he'd ever been. She was beginning to doubt if that would ever truly go away. Still, he was just as brave and loyal, just as dedicated and light-hearted. McGonagall's thin lips formed her usual stern frown of disapproval unintentionally, seeing him grin. What did a young man taking his O.W.L theoretical Charms have to grin about? As she watched more closely, she could see his blue eyes flicker up, his grin stretch across his freckled face, more pronounced. What _was_ going on? Her eyes darted to the object of his gaze -

Miss Granger.

Hermione Granger, still a bushy-haired know-it-all, though not to the extreme she was in her first years at Hogwarts, had loosened up and relaxed considerably. She was more outwardly focused and, though still dedicated to her work, very intensely dedicated to her friends. The Professor could see the woman sprouting and struggling in her, just as she could see the somewhat nostalgic smile she allowed to play on her lips before hunching over her parchment, scribbling furiously. McGonagall's eyebrow raised slightly. Perhaps...

Indeed. Harry Potter, a physical replica of his father to the lock of hair that stood up in the back, no longer the scared, wondering, expectant First Year she'd first met in baggy clothes at eleven years, was also smiling slightly. Green eyes flickered forward to Miss Granger's head, observing her as she scribbled furiously, before looking back down to his own parchment, writing in a decidedly more calm manner than Miss Granger. She glanced over all three of them again. All three still bore faint smiles as they wrote or scribbled. Before McGonagall's mental eyes, she watched them become two full-grown men and a woman, still firmly connected through bonds of experience, friendship, and love, still quick to protect, defend, chastise, and laugh. A small nostalgic smile touched her own lips, before she snapped out of the mindset and the three fifteen-year-olds became just that, young men and women once more. Glancing around the room once more, she saw no other smiles.

She had to find out what was on that test.

_a) Give the incantation, and b) give the wand movement required to make objects fly._

McGonagall stared at the first parchment on the stack five minutes after the exam's end, ignoring the answer and other questions below it, a bemused expression on her face. Perhaps she wasn't meant to understand.

After all, what's in a spell?

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